Healthy Chocolate Avocado Muffins

These Healthy Chocolate Avocado Muffins are vegan, refined-sugar-free, eggless and can be gluten-free! As well as containing NO butter or oil, they contain avocado – but you can’t taste it at all!

Look at these chocolate muffins.

Just look.

Really closely inspect these chocolate muffins.

Can you see it? No, I don’t mean the gorgeously fudgy and soft texture. Nor am I referring to the deliciously indulgent chocolatey taste. I don’t even mean the melty chocolate chips poking out from the top.

The thing that I’m actually trying to get you to see, is in fact invisible.

Even if you take a bite of one of these scrumptious muffins, you wouldn’t be able to guess what hides within. You won’t realise that this invisible ingredient is responsible for the fudgy, smooth texture. It doesn’t affect the taste or smell. Absolutely undetectable.

Can you guess what it is?…

This very muffin right here contains: Avocado.

Due to the polyunsaturated fats in avocado, these Healthy Chocolate Avocado Muffins don’t require butter or oil. Not even Greek yoghurt! The avocado alone works in place of butter and gives the muffins a glossy sheen and wonderful texture.

As for the other ingredients, I used wholewheat self-raising flour which adds fibre to these cakes. However, if you need them to be gluten free, go ahead and use a gluten free self-raising flour instead! (Bear in mind that the texture will be slightly drier if you use a gluten-free flour blend.)

They are also egg free! And therefore Vegan, too!

Instead of normal sugar, I used some unrefined light muscovado sugar (which gives a mellow, rich undertone to the flavour). I also used maple syrup, which adds to the fudgy texture and is another unrefined natural sweetener which contains good nutrition.

Because we’ll use a blender to whiz the avocado and water into a smooth runny paste, it is mixed seamlessly right into the mixture. That’s why we can’t detect it at all in the finished cakes!

How many people can you fool into thinking these are normal chocolate muffins? Trust me, they wouldn’t be able to guess that there is in fact avocado hidden within every bite…

Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan, 350°F, gas 4) and place 12 paper muffin cases in the cavities of a 12-hole muffin baking tray. Place the avocado flesh and water in a blender; blend until you are left with a smooth runny green paste.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the unrefined sugar OR maple syrup/honey (or mixture of both) with the avocado paste from the blender, and the vanilla extract. Then add the cocoa powder and vanilla extract; stir well.

Add the flour and baking powder (I usually sift my baking powder in to avoid lumps), then fold together until just incorporated.

Spoon mixture evenly into 12 muffin cases (about 2 tbsp mixture in each) and bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until cooked on top. NOTE: The cakes will seem slightly underdone in the centre as they are supposed to be soft & fudgy!

Notes

*I used 100g honey and 110g unrefined light muscovado sugar (if you use all honey or maple syrup, the cakes will be more fudgy, as the sugar helps with the crumb structure).

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Hi! I'm Katie! Welcome to Katrina's Clean Cooking, where you will find lots of healthy, scrumptious recipes.
I’ve always enjoyed cooking and baking (as well as eating!), so began experimenting with food in the kitchen. Having developed quite a collection of recipes, I decided it would be good to share them with other people!
See you around! x